Design Tactics #11 — 9 design takeaways from Arc

A breakdown of my go-to source for design inspiration

This week I finally unveiled my biggest project yet so I’m still kinda riding the high of the announcement :)

But I’ve also been working on a new walkthrough that I’m really excited to show you.

Let’s dive in 👇

9 design takeaways from using Arc 🌍

I wholeheartedly believe that Arc is going to have a MASSIVE impact on the world of product design.

They’ve rethought what it means to surf the internet from the ground up.

And it’s incredible… 🤯

The more I kept using the product the more I kept thinking “geez I need to be incorporating this into my own work”.

So I started taking notes and grabbing screenshots…

Here are the 9 design takeaways that stood out the most 👇

Ridd 🏛 @ridd_design

Arc is a masterclass in product design 🤯 It's so inspiring and I feel like we can all learn a TON from how it's designed. So I've been taking all kinds of notes... Here are the 9 design elements that stand out the most 👇

Welcome to the deep end... 🤿

I’d like to introduce you to Dive.

It’s a partnership with 7 other (absurdly talented) designers.

Dive features advanced courses where you can learn directly from the most qualified instructors on the planet.

I CANNOT wait for you to see who these designers are :)

The first reveal happens in 2 days…

Click here to get on the early access list for Dive ✌️

Behind-the-scenes of branding Dive with Fons Mans 🌊

There are so many messy details that go into creating a brand.

Too often we only see the finished product or a select set of polished “process” screenshots…

For Dive, I wanted to be 100% transparent.

Here’s a complete rundown of everything that went in to bringing this brand to life 👇

Ridd 🏛 @ridd_design

I had so much fun jamming with @FonsMans on the branding for Dive 🤿 We started from 0 and it was a heck of a journey... So I thought it might be fun to give a behind-the-scenes look at the entire branding process 👇

Random Goodness 💥

1) I love when people pull back the curtain on their work

You’re going to really enjoy this amazing behind-the-scenes video from Rafa showing how he designed the beta interaction for Along video.

2) Ideas for strengthening your understanding of development fundamentals

I recently turned to Twitter to source ideas for how designers can gain a better understanding of how engineering actually works.

Per usual, Twitter came in clutch 👇

This thread is full of awesome ideas

3) I recently joined the Polywork podcast

We talked about side hustles, my 10 year plan, and I even gave the first preview into what Dive is all about 🤿

👉 Spotify

👉 iTunes

4) Imagining what a color picker for words would look like

I love when you discover truly unique pattern concepts 🥹

5) 4 ways to make user-friendly color styles in Figma

Molly has been dropping knowledge bombs left and right on Twitter lately. Highly recommend giving her a follow 👇

Molly Hellmuth @molly_hellmuth

💡Figma tip: Optimize color styles for your users, the design team After years of building a refining design systems. Here are 4 ways I’ve learned to make color styles teams will actually use.. *correctly*

Tips for creating an epic portfolio 🖼️

This tweet thread really stood out to me. Especially when they talk about showcasing high quality, legible artifacts from your research.

The internet has too many photos of white boards, sketches, and sticky notes that ultimately mean nothing to the person reviewing your work…

cai on the internet @igobycai

Emerging product designers! Have you ever been told to "show more process work" in your portfolio without any concrete guidance on how to best go about that? Figured I'd share some quick personal tips on the topic as more companies open up their intern & junior roles💡🧵

Portfolios need to emphasize skimmability. And you should never assume that someone is going to read your entire portfolio piece.

On the contrary, you should assume they are not going to read your portfolio piece.

That is, unless you do a great job sucking them in right from the beginning.

That’s why I like to think of portfolios as recipe videos 👇

Ridd 🏛 @ridd_design

I've looked at hundreds of design portfolios while hiring for Maven. And honestly... the default format consistently falls short 😬 So instead of creating another cookie-cutter portfolio piece... Try this instead 👇

One last point on portfolios, do you use a Loom video to talk about portfolio projects? If yes, I’d love to see it :)